before.

Sketches was issued that autumn, and Howells gave it a good

notice--possibly better than it deserved.

Considered among Mark Twain's books to-day, the collection

of sketches does not seem especially important. With the

exception of the frog story and the "True Story" most of

those included--might be spared. Clemens himself confessed

to Howells that He wished, when it was too late, that he had

destroyed a number of them. The book, however, was

distinguished in a special way: it contains Mark Twain's

first utterance in print on the subject of copyright, a

matter in which he never again lost interest. The absurdity

and injustice of the copyright laws both amused and

irritated him, and in the course of time he would be largely

instrumental in their improvement. In the book his open

petition to Congress that all property rights, as well as

literary ownership, should be put on the copyright basis and

limited to a "beneficent term of forty-two years," was more

or less of a joke, but, like so many of Mark Twain's jokes,

it was founded on reason and justice.

He had another idea, that was not a joke: an early plan in

the direction of international copyright. It was to be a

petition signed by the leading American authors, asking the

367

The Letters Of Mark Twain, Complete